May
21, 2002 In
the segment "World Cup
for Robots," Alan watches real, nuts-and-bolts robots
play a live soccer game. The physical matches of the RoboCup
league are only a part of the competition, however. Equally
important is the "virtual" simulated match, where
artificial intelligence can be developed in a pure computing
environment, free from any mechanical constraints. Here you
can have a look at a couple of recent simulated championship
matches. -
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The
Cutting Edge of A.I.

Bearing
a passing resemblance to a video game from the early 1980's,
the simulated RoboCup matches don't look very impressive -
one could be forgiven for assuming that the underlying programming
is similarly simplistic. Despite this austere appearance, however,
the simulated RoboCup platform is actually a test bed for the cutting edge of artificial
intelligence and robotics research. "The goal of the simulator
and of the real robots is to make it as realistic and challenging
as possible, so that the lessons learned are as general as
possible," says Peter Stone, Computer Sciences Professor
at the University of Texas at Austin and former "coach"
of Carnegie Mellon University's simulated team, CMUnited.
In 1999 he and team members Patrick Riley and Prof. Manuela
Veloso led CMUnited to victory in the simulated RoboCup championship.

This platform is a test bed
for the cutting edge of artificial intelligence and robotics
research.

Simulated
RoboCup is very different from the graphically lavish, almost
photorealistic video games playing on televisions in living
rooms across the planet. In a familiar console-style video
game of a soccer match, the computerized "players" are part
of a single larger program that possesses complete information
on the positions and states of all the objects within the
game. In contrast, RoboCup soccer models a more realistic
situation where the individual players have only a limited
view of their virtual "playing field," and must make decisions
independently, with imperfect knowledge of what's going on
around them. The members of the competing teams in a RoboCup
match are individual programs that must be equipped with both
a general strategy, so they can work with other teammates
effectively, and enough individual smarts to make decisions
and take initiative based on the situation, just like in real
life.

The
simulation league allows programmers to test the latest
in artificial intelligence. See
some examples.

Stone
calls his approach to programming a "locker-room agreement"
- a way for the programmed teammates to share plans and signals
before the game so they can coordinate their actions with
only minimal communication during the actual match. The players
in the simulated matches represent idealized robots, but the
algorithms that are developed here can be applied to the real thing, often
with winning results. "Since the locker-room agreement deals
mainly with the high-level concepts of playing soccer, and
not the low-level mechanics or skills issues, I was able to
transfer it to a real robot team with about a half-hour's
worth of coding," Stone says.-
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